I bought them basically for one reason: 'earbuds' just plain old HURT my ears, and the kind that sit outside the ears have never sounded good to me at all.

I decided on these Koss plugs because of the manner in which they go in your ears - they use the exact same soft latex foam rubber that actual ear plugs use, so they form an extremely comfortable, lightweight, and most importantly NON-HURTY headphone-wearing experience.

You roll/squish them to get them in your ear, after about 10 seconds they have expanded to fill your ears AND block out almost all noise. And they stay put until you decide to take them out. And they are so light, you will literally forget you have them in. With the little type of buds that usually come with players, after trying several times to jam them in my ears to where they won't fall out after 5 seconds, the pressure on the ears causes so much pain I have to take them out before long anyway. These Koss phones do not cause this kind of discomfort, even after several hours of having them in.

As far as the sound goes, well, all I can say is, they sound better than any other little bud-type headphones I have ever used, and better by far. I assume this is primarily due to the fact that almost all outside sounds are eliminated, allowing you to hear a lot more than you would with normal little earbuds.

Let me put it this way: I doubt you will ever find a better pair of headphones for about 14 bucks. Are there better ones out there? Without a doubt. In fact, this Christmas I am getting some Shure E2c's, to find out how much I have been missing. And if they don't sound significantly better, then I will return them and stick with my trusty old Koss.

BTW: The Shure E2c aren't worth the money at all. You only pay for the big name, nothing else. For the same price (or less) the Sennheiser CX300, V-Moda Bass Fréqs or V-Moda Vibes kick the stuffing out of the E2c.

And in fact I payed £15 for Sennhieser CX300's on eBay. All the sellers get them from Sennheiser in China apparently and although Currys and Comet retial them at £40 they actually retail at £25.

I got mine from Ebay last week and they were in a full EU retail pack. Fake or not they sound very good and the more I listen to them the more I want to listen to them. I have Full sized Grado and Senn to compare them with and even have access to pxc 150 noise cancelling and yet I am now using the CX300

I paid £18 inc postage from a member in the Midlands who I suspect imports them direct from China

Cheapest full retail price I have seen them at is £29 at Sound Control Leeds ( Guitars, Drums, Keyboards amps etc)

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'There is a fine line between clever and stupid'..David St Hubbins

The Spark Plugs are about the only IEMs that will stay in my ears. While they may not be be best sounding out there, what do you want for about $12? Besides, there's lots of info on the web about mods if you want to make them sound better. Finally, they do provide a fair amount of sound isolation.

I've found Koss Plugs to be useful in very loud places, and for super bass heavy music, but they really cant hold anything up against the marshmellows in terms of sound quality, but it just depends on what you want/need.

I got mine from Ebay last week and they were in a full EU retail pack. Fake or not they sound very good and the more I listen to them the more I want to listen to them. I have Full sized Grado and Senn to compare them with and even have access to pxc 150 noise cancelling and yet I am now using the CX300

I paid £18 inc postage from a member in the Midlands who I suspect imports them direct from China

Cheapest full retail price I have seen them at is £29 at Sound Control Leeds ( Guitars, Drums, Keyboards amps etc)

Same here, the seller when I asked said they are Chinese imports and they dont come with the full set of earpieices but he was happy to send them incase I did want them. He also said the Chinese ones are meant to have the Straight Jack Port instead of the J ones.